“Here’s to Jane Austen,” he said as he raised his wineglass.
“To Jane!” Aunt Ella clinked his glass.
“To Miss Austen.” Vanessa raised her glass to the little girl left at the boarding school.
After Vanessa cleared and washed the dinner dishes, refusing Julian’s help, and brought out the tea and coffee, Aunt Ella tapped a green leather photo album that sat on the table next to her antique tea set reserved for the terrace. Her hands looked less and less familiar, but instead, more like the hands of an old woman. “Vanessa, you simply must see the photos of Julian’s estate he’s just shown me.”
All she could think was: Her aunt had put a petunia in the microwave and now her necklaces in the freezer. What next?
“She need not bother with it,” Julian said.
Vanessa snapped to. “Oh, of course, Julian, I’d love to see the album.” She settled into the wrought iron chair next to him, with ever-blooming green and blue hydrangeas surrounding them and the cityscape opened up to them against the evening sky.
Good thing she didn’t go for Regency bucks, because it made it easy to remind herself this was work. It had been a long time since she’d socialized with a client, much less a male client just a few years her senior, who also was very good-looking. And polite. And doting on her aunt. In fact, that had never happened.
Aunt Ella took the flickering on of the Italian lights dotting the terrace as her cue to stand. “I will say good night, then. Tomorrow’s another busy day and then the ball . . .”
Julian stood and bowed. “Yes, do rest. We have so many festivities to look forward to!”
He held the door open for her while Vanessa popped up and gave her aunt a gargantuan hug, a kiss on her velvety cheek, and a playful twist of her necklace.
“Do you need any help with anything?”
“No, no, you two enjoy the evening.”
A glimmer of hope washed over Aunt Ella’s face, and Vanessa needed to nip that in the wedding boutonniere. She knew the machinations of her aunt’s mind.
“We have work to discuss. But I won’t keep him up past his bedtime. Especially with his acclimating to the six-hour time difference.”
“Good night, Ella.” Julian smiled.
Once her aunt had left, Vanessa lowered her voice to a whisper. “Julian, I have to tell you something.”
“No need to bother. I already know,” he said as he sipped his tea.
“You already know what?”
“You do not particularly like Jane Austen.”
How did he know that? Unless Aunt Ella had told him . . .
“No, no, I need to tell you that my aunt has been recently diagnosed with dementia. Tomorrow the doctor is going to call me with the test results. We’ll know whether it’s Alzheimer’s or not.”
“Oh. I knew that, too. She told me.”
“She did?”
“We’re rather good friends. You must know we met at a Jane Austen gathering in England years ago. Your aunt is quite open about the dementia; in fact, she wrote me about it weeks ago, when you went in for the first appointment.”
“I see. And the Jane Austen thing—?”
“It’s obvious to me.”
“I have nothing against her, you know—” She really didn’t. It was just a bad association more than anything.
“No need to explain. It’s quite all right.”
“I hope you understand that just because I’m not a lifelong member of the Jane Austen Society, I’ve still done and will do everything I know of to help you sell as many books and earn as many donations for your estate as possible.”
“You have done a bang-up job and all without any remuneration—”
“I do like to donate to good causes when I can.”
“Yes, your aunt told me about the cat shelter.”
“She did? Now you’re going to think I’m a crazy cat lady—”
“That’s not what I think about you at all.”
What did he think of her? Wait a minute. Why did she care what a client thought of her? She only cared about what he thought of her work.
“I’m most appreciative. I certainly never anticipated so many radio interviews and telly interviews.”
“Cable television, but yes. But you never know, we could still end up on prime-time news if something goes our way! As for the dementia, I wanted you to know in case she does something odd. Just this evening I found her necklaces in the freezer.”
“I am most, most sorry. Whilst I’m here I will surely look after her.”
Vanessa sighed. “Thank you. So. Julian.” She gave the photo album a quick tap. “Give me the grand tour of your humble abode.”
As he pulled his chair closer to hers, church bells chimed down the street, and for an awkward moment their eyes met, but Vanessa looked away and at the album.
He’d carried this thick, heavy photo album overseas?
With ceremony, he opened it up.
The pages were the color of coffee cream and each black-and-white photo had been carefully mounted with black corners.
He began by showing her photos of the ornate front gate, lawns, a pond, and semicircular gravel drive. The front grounds alone looked bigger than the city block that her condo building was on.
“And this is the view from the road.”
Her coffee spoon fell with a loud clank on her saucer. She pushed her coffee aside, wiped her fingers with her napkin, and took the album in both hands. Was dropping her spoon terribly obvious? She might as well say it. “Julian, it’s gorgeous. Wow.”
“Do you like the style?”
“Very much. What’s not to like?”
“It was built just before Jane Austen’s time, and she would’ve been very familiar with the architecture.”
“When was it built?”
“Seventeen twenty-six. So it’s not that ancient by many standards.”
Vanessa laughed. “Not by English standards.”
He smiled, too, and their eyes locked again.
“We think of Aunt Ella’s place here as vintage, and it was built in 1920!” She laughed.
He smiled.
“But your place—” She focused on the photo.
“It does have a gorgeous Palladian ashlar facade, does it not?”
She wasn’t even sure what that meant, but the six-columned, three-storied gray stone structure had twenty-something windows on the front alone and a tricorner pediment topped it off. It could be a museum. To say it was impressive would be an understatement, but there was something else about it, too; she just couldn’t figure out what.
“You live here all alone?” Was that a question she would ask any other client? “I—I mean it’s a huge place—”
“I am living alone in the drafty old place at the moment, aside from the skeleton staff it takes to keep such a place from crumbling entirely to bits. Most of it is cordoned off and the back grounds in particular need more tending than I can afford, I’m sorry to say.”
Vanessa stared at photos of an interior marble staircase in crumbling disrepair, water damage in the basement kitchen, and another room with peeling wallpaper and furniture draped in white tarps. “I didn’t know it was so beautiful and needed so much work.”
Julian sat back and folded his arms. “I didn’t think you’d read my book. I spend a large portion of the middle chapters addressing my challenges with inheriting an estate in such a—state.”
Did Vanessa just feel herself blush? When was the last time she’d blushed?
“I’m sorry, no, I didn’t. I just haven’t had the time. But that hasn’t affected the campaign I’ve created for you. And I will read it—I have some time now.”
The rest of the photos documented the disrepair of this once-handsome home. She wanted to read his book, and suddenly she regretted not reading it. Instead she had put her energies into what she thought was a better use of her time, lining up media opportunities for him.
For the first time in a long while she had the
urge to read, and she only hoped his book could hold her attention. These days she never seemed to get past any opening chapters in her recreational reading.
“Since you didn’t read the book, you may not know that the home, in my extended family for generations, fell into neglect under my great-uncle’s occupancy. He was an eccentric old bachelor who suffered an undiagnosed neurological disorder, and he lived there his entire life, until he went into a home, and then the house really took a turn for the worse as it remained vacant for four years, complete with roof leaks. I was the next in line to inherit, and I didn’t want to leave off being a history professor, but—well, my younger brother laughs at me, considering the inheritance more of a curse than anything. It’s a massive responsibility.”
Still fascinated by the photos, Vanessa sipped her coffee and pointed to a photo of what appeared to be a tomb, built atop a hillside overlooking the estate.
“What’s this?” she asked.
His hand brushed against hers and she moved her hand to her lap.
“Oh, that.” Julian laughed. “That’s my great-great-grandfather, looking down on me, making sure I don’t catapult the family estate into ruination.”
“No pressure, right?”
“Exactly.”
The project took a grip on her in a way it hadn’t before. Seeing these photos, meeting Julian, sensing his passion for the restoration made it personal, just like her work had been in the beginning, when people took the time for face-to-face meetings instead of Skype sessions, conference calls, and endless e-mail volleys.
“I’m doing everything I can to restore it to its former glory and open it to the public to see, but it’s going to take millions. It’s currently listed in the English Heritage at Risk Register and I have only two years to turn it around or it could be condemned and torn down. This is why I wrote My Year as Mr. Darcy. Maybe I’m daft, but I can picture it fully restored. Perhaps even turned into a hotel with public areas open for touring.”
“I can see it, too. Yes, Julian, you’re going to make it happen!”
He smiled. “You have a wonderful enthusiasm. Whilst many are encouraging, others are not so optimistic.”
“Like . . . your significant other?”
Did she just say that? Really?
He looked right at her with his dark eyes. “It takes an extraordinary person to be keen on such a massive project.”
She pushed her chair farther away from him. “I’m thrilled to have you as one of my clients, Julian, and I look forward to working on this with you while you’re here.”
He leaned back in his chair. “There is one lady in particular who wants me to restore it.”
So, he had a girlfriend after all.
“Perhaps then she will leave me alone.”
Wait. He didn’t have a girlfriend? She wished she didn’t care. “Who’s that?”
“The female ghost in the drawing room.”
“You’re kidding. There isn’t really a ghost, is there?”
“There is. She wears a very fragrant rosewater perfume and she delights in knocking over chairs.”
Vanessa didn’t know what to make of all this, with ghosts, roof leaks, untended gardens, and questions of a client’s relationship status swirling through her mind.
Suddenly, something hit her like a fallen roof beam and she had to set her coffee down, she was so excited.
“Julian, do you have these photos on a chip? Are they digital? Do you have any digital video footage of your home?”
“No,” he said. “I still use my old film camera from when I was a student. And I have my own darkroom, so—”
Vanessa had to laugh. Of course he didn’t have a digital camera. “You own a huge estate but you don’t have a digital camera.”
He smiled. “Even though I’m what you Americans would call ‘house poor,’ I can afford a digital camera, but I’ve refused on principle. Everyone who owns a digital camera tells me they never print their photos. It’s one of the curses of modern technology. This way one values the pictures and gets them developed.”
“You have a point.” She would have to scan these photos in, but it would be worth it. “Julian, we need to leverage this!”
“Whatever do you mean?” He stirred a lump of sugar into his tea.
Vanessa popped up. “Give me some time and I’ll lay it out for you.”
He smirked. “You will do what, precisely?”
Her response betrayed her with too much innuendo. “I simply meant I’ll introduce you to some new ideas for our PR plan.”
“Oh.”
“I have to get to work on my laptop.”
He looked at the watch dangling from a fob at his waist. “Yes, but it’s half seven in the evening your time.”
“And?”
“And you are planning to work now?”
“Why not?” She laughed.
She had gotten a glimpse of the man beneath the Darcy trappings, and, oddly enough, she liked what she saw.
Chapter 3
She woke the next morning with her e-reader on the pillow next to her, open to the last page of My Year as Mr. Darcy. She had breezed through it, but after working late on the new additions to the PR plan, she’d fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion.
She wanted to tell him about the new elements of the plan, but that would have to wait. This morning marked the opening of the conference and Julian was the second keynote speaker.
Aunt Ella had gone ahead with her friend Paul, while Vanessa escorted Julian to the conference hotel. He, in his full Regency attire, carried her video cam tripod for her—ever the gentleman.
“I must warn you, Julian, that our conference hotel has been double-booked with a comic-book sci-fi conference called Hero Con. At first I was upset, but then I realized we could spin this to our advantage, and I’ve been plugging your book and Undressing show to their conference attendees, too.”
“I admire your ingenuity and glass-half-full perspective, but I can’t imagine that extraterrestrials would have any interest in Jane Austen.”
Vanessa laughed. “Their conference has three times the attendees, and yet a third of them have also signed up for our conference. Don’t be surprised if you see a Batwoman or two in the audience.”
A man dressed as Mr. Spock stood outside the hotel lobby doors.
Once they stepped into the lobby, they saw that Caped Crusaders, goth girls, and werefolk peppered the escalators and main floor. Julian, in his breeches, tailcoat, and hat, faded into the comic-book background.
Vanessa happened to be the one who stood out. She had to be the only one in a skirt and blazer. She’d seen these comic cons on the news but had never been to one. She’d never been to a Jane Austen conference, either, for that matter.
A fortune-teller with heavy makeup lasered in on Vanessa from across the lobby and came right up to her. “I see foreign travel in your future. It’s what you need, darling.”
Vanessa furrowed her brows. She dismissed the gypsy’s prediction. She wouldn’t go overseas—not with her aunt’s health problems.
“Mark my words, you will be flying abroad very soon.”
Vanessa watched her walk away, leaving a hint of jasmine.
“Perhaps you will be going to England,” Julian said. “She seems convinced you are going abroad.”
“She’s also wearing gym shoes under her fringed skirt.”
He laughed.
This had to be the most fun she’d had with a client in a while.
“If you do venture across the pond, I can offer you free all-access tickets to the Jane Austen Festival in Bath. I’ll be doing my show there. Nine days of Jane Austen for you!”
She smirked. “I’ve practically grown up with Austen. Nine days wouldn’t phase me. Look over there by the coffee bar. It’s Obi-Wan Kenobi eating a cake pop.”
He smiled. “As Austen would say, ‘I am excessively diverted.’”
Thor sipped a frozen coffee topped with whipped cream from a straw.
<
br /> Vanessa’s intern, Kai, arrived exactly ten minutes late. He always showed up late—it was his m.o.—but then again, what can you expect from a kid who gets paid in college credit and the occasional coffee?
Kai really wanted to be a film director, not a PR man, and he dressed, always, in a T-shirt, black jeans, and black high-tops. He wore a silver ring on his thumb, and to her friends in the biz, Vanessa referred to him as her “bf”—short not for “boyfriend” but for “boy Friday.”
She’d always joked about getting a boy Friday, as opposed to a girl Friday, to help her out with things, but this past year she’d made it happen, and it was worth dealing with his tardiness and hangovers. Kai did have a talent for shooting, and she often let him do the filming and editing for client sites. Today she’d asked him to come as a backup, just to be sure she got all the footage of Julian she needed.
“This is so cool,” Kai said.
“Quite,” said Julian.
Vanessa stifled a laugh. These two couldn’t be more diametrically opposed. She made the necessary introductions.
“Lean on us, Julian; we’ve got your back,” Vanessa said. “Whatever we can do to help you out, just let us know.”
“Will do.”
“We all have each other’s cell phone numbers, so we’re only a text or call away.”
Julian cleared his throat. “I shall not be using my mobile, as I prefer to keep it off. It breaks character. People don’t expect Darcy to be texting.”
Kai looked at Vanessa.
“We’ll do our best, then, to stick near you, Julian, won’t we, Kai? But I am expecting an important phone call from my aunt’s doctor today, and I do have to keep in touch with my other clients and may need to step away. And Kai has homework to squeeze in. If you need us and can’t find us in the crowd, please, consider stepping into the men’s room to call.”
What did he have against modern technology? He couldn’t exactly send a messenger on horseback.
“Okay. Ready to roll?” Kai asked Vanessa, as he always did, as if she was the one holding him up, even though he always arrived late.
As the three of them made their way through the lobby, Vanessa felt as if she had fallen into a parallel universe. Even though she had been immersed in Darcy fandom for the past several months, clearly he wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. From what she was seeing, apparently some women preferred vampires.
Undressing Mr. Darcy Page 3